new York Big tech fear has a name – and it’s Lina Khan. The 32-year-old head of the US competition authority FTC has taken on the fight against the overwhelming power of the big technology companies. And she started the year with a great success: a court rejected Facebook’s allegations of bias against her and accepted the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) competition lawsuit against the social media group in the second attempt.
The original lawsuit was filed in December 2020 before Khan’s term in office and was dismissed in the summer of 2021. But the FTC boss appointed by Joe Biden has subsequently improved the lawsuit and has now also convinced the court.
“The Federal Trade Comission’s competition lawsuit against Facebook Inc. stumbled from the starting blocks when this court dismissed the complaint last June,” said judge James Boasberg in his reasoning. The basic theory of the complaint is also the same this time. “But the facts that are added this time to corroborate these theories are far more robust and detailed than before, particularly in the context of the outline of the defender’s alleged monopoly,” writes Boasberg. This time the FTC “did its homework”.
The lawyer Khan is behind the homework. She accuses the Facebook group, which has now been renamed Meta, of having bought WhatsApp and Instagram in order to protect its own monopoly in the market in an unfair way. Therefore, the takeovers would have to be reversed.
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As requested by the judge, Khan has improved the lawsuit of their predecessors against Facebook in the past few months by better proving Facebook’s monopoly position. The FTC argued primarily with the development of user numbers and analyzes of how much time people spend on the platform.
The 32-year-old is an exceptional lawyer in the USA
At the same time, the FTC tried to clearly define the market for social networks. Khan defined these as platforms on which users maintain contacts with friends and family and share contributions and experiences in a common space. In doing so, she delimited the social networks of providers such as Twitter, Youtube and the emerging video platform Tiktok, because these are more geared towards the use of content than personal connections.
Khan is considered an exceptional lawyer in the USA. Even her appointment as a member of the board of the US competition and consumer protection agency caused a stir. When she not only belonged to the council, but was also allowed to lead it as chairwoman, it was considered a revolution. After all, not only the youngest person of all time, but also one of the most prominent critics of large technology companies took over the leadership of the powerful agency.
Khan is not just a professor of antitrust law at New York’s renowned Columbia University. She is also a star in the academic world. She caused an uproar in 2017 when she published an academic article in the “Yale Law Journal” at the end of her law degree (“The Amazon Paradox”). In it, she dissected the weaknesses of antitrust law against the online retailer. The digital platform acts as a gatekeeper and “suppresses competition with all dependent traders,” denounced Khan.
At that time, your article was read thousands of times by laypeople too, and it gave strength to a new law school, the so-called Neo-Brandeis Movement. “This school is more on the European legal and political line than the American one. It’s more aggressive in many ways, ”explains James Keyte, director of the Antitrust Institute at the prestigious Fordham University in New York. Khan, who sees the breakup of big tech as a priority, is “clearly the leading academic and voice for her school of thought,” said Keyte.
Khan has bipartisan support
The “Financial Times” called her “Big Tech’s number two enemy of the state” – right behind EU Commissioner Margrethe Vestager. The woman who wants to break the dominance of the digital giants sums up the love-hate relationship of billions of people. “As consumers and users, we are attached to the tech companies,” said the lawyer in an interview. “But as citizens, employees and entrepreneurs, we see that their superiority is worrying.”
As the head of the FTC, Khan directly influences the course of the US government towards Google, Facebook and Amazon. Khan has the backing of both parties. When she was appointed, she received 69 votes in favor of only 28 against. Commenting on her appointment on Twitter at the time, Khan commented: “Congress founded the FTC to protect fair competition and protect consumers, workers and honest businesses from unfair and deceptive conduct. I look forward to upholding this mission with all your might and serving the American public. ”Now she tries to turn words into deeds.
Facebook’s lawyers attempted to use their history to argue that Khan was biased and that the court should dismiss the case for that alone. But the group did not get away with it.
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